REMARKS ON N. N. KRESTINSKY’S REPORT AND ASSIGNMENTS TO N. P. GORBUNOV

Written:Written on September 2, 1921Published:First published in part in 1928 inLenin Miscellany VIII.

      Published in full in 1965 inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 53.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1976,

      Moscow,Volume 45,

      pages278b-280a.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet ArchiveYou may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Chairmanof the Council of People’s Commissars

...Infulfilling the duties assigned to the central
and local financial organs, they have recently been
coming up against exceptionally unfavourable
obstacles, chiefly the fact that the executive organs of
the Soviet power haveNB|||completely forgottenthe
injunctions of the Constitutionon the drawing up of
estimatesandthe making of expendituresin

accordance with them, which is havingan extremely
harmful effect on the generalstate of the budget, and is
the cause ofexceptional upheavalsin the system of
monetary circulation.

Toillustrate this, one need merely point out the
following circumstances:
1) in some districts, wages
are issued to workers not in accordance with the
tariff rates, but at free market prices, sometimes
amounting to as much as 700,000 rubles per man a day
(Privolzhsk district, and the western and eastern
gubernias);
2) actors and workers of Soviet theatres are
remunerated not according to tariff salaries, but with
additions, coming to many hundreds of per cent over
and above the latter (besides, under the estimates of
the People’s Commissariat for Education the cost ofmaintenance of the theatres comes to||||outrageous!!

29,000 million,
and of institutions of higher education, to 17,000
million);
3) it has become commonplace, and very
much the rule for Soviet institutions and enterprises
to purchase the things they need on the free market
and, naturally, at its prices....

Aproximate confirmation of the irregularity of
demands for bank-notes from treasure institutions is
provided by thepractice,||||How did they
manage
to “adopt”
it without
the P.C.F.?

which has beenadoptedby
Soviet establishments even in Moscow, under which
the organs of the Moscow Soviet strive to have the
Moscow Finance Department hold for thorn bank-notes
to the amount of 3,000 million rabies a day, i.e.,
75,000 million a month, whereas, according to the
data of the budget department and the Central
Treasury of the People’s Commissariat for Finance, the
Moscow Finance Department has up to now been
granted credits of only 188,000 million rubles, i.e., an
average of not more than 27,000–30,000 million rubles
a month....

ComradeGorbunov:

Pleasesend the following paper on my behalf:People’s
Commissariat for Finance + People’s Commissariat for Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection+ Chairman of theNarrow C.P.C.

Iauthorise the People’s Commissars for Finance and
Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection (or their deputies) to call
a conference right away with the participation of the
Chairman of theNarrow C.P.C., and the C.P.C. Business
Manager Gorbunov to work out and put before theC.P.C.within a week draft decisions to combat the afore-mentioned
breaches of the law. I draw the attention of the Workers’
and Peasants’ Inspection to this oversight.

Howhas it been possible to tolerate the outrageous
practices described in this paper? In particular, the
overrun spending by the People’s Commissariat for Education
on the theatres?

LeninChairman, C.P.C.

ComradeGorbunov:

Pleasesee to it that this is done within a specified
period. You may send Smolyaninov instead of yourself, ifyou want to, or let the conference be a three-sided
affair.